To James
I understand how RED works, and that the percentage of proceeds from RED product sales that are designated to go to the Global Fund do go STRAIGHT there. Perhaps you are confusing what critics of RED are saying when we’ve talked about how it would be more effective for the RED companies to have donated directly to the Global Fund. That is because they’ve spent an estimated $100 million just to launch RED, and no one knows how much since. RED will not make these numbers public, despite multiple calls for transparency, probably because revealing these numbers will show just how ineffective the model is. So what critics of RED are saying is that if RED partner companies donated all the extra RED marketing expenses DIRECTLY to the Global Fund, then they’d have donated much much more toward fighting AIDS.
You’ve argued, as RED VP of Marketing also argued in this discussion, that if Apple markets RED products, its Apple’s money and not RED’s. So its not a marketing expense and shouldn’t be factored into the equation. In my challenge to RED to reveal their number to the public, I stated that if they need to qualify the marketing expense #s by showing how much the RED partner companies previously spent on average for marketing, then they should. Indeed this would give us a much better sense of how effective RED is in raising money vs spending money on advertising. But RED will not share this information, and as I pointed out, since there was a $91 million increase in GAP’s marketing expenses coinciding with the year of RED’s launch, it seems clear that RED marketing is not the normal ongoing marketing operations but an added expense that must be viewed as cost and factored into RED’s overall fundraising numbers.
As for RED’s numbers, if you had read the ongoing discussion previous to your post, you’d have seen the debate around the $110 million. Only $60 million has been generated from RED product sales. The remainder came from Bono’s celebrity art auction, which I stated is the kind of philanthropy Bono should be doing, because its a direct donation to the Global Fund, doesn’t require an enormous marketing expense to make it happen, and doesn’t tell people that buying sweatshop apparel is responsible consumption. As I stated previously: direct donations from millionaires have nothing to do with what the RED Campaign’s unique fundraising strategy. Why even label the money raised from this auction, if not to balance RED’s books and justify RED’s model in the eyes of its critics? Clearly, associating this auction with the RED Campaign was a PR maneuver designed to silence the critics who rightly pointed out that the marketing costs for RED have far outweighed the proceeds from RED sales.
It’s true that $1,128 is not a lot of money. But James, you gotta give us a chance here. We’ve only had a couple of weeks to raise that money since I launched this thing! Not bad for such a short time I’d say! But seriously folks, even though $1,128 may not be a whole lot of money, it certainly is more than negative $40 million dollars, which is the number you get when you subtract RED’s $100M marketing expenses (according to available estimates) from $60M in proceeds generated from its product sales. And most likely RED’s numbers are actually much deeper in the whole since the $100M estimate was just around RED’s launch and does not include whatever additional marketing costs they’ve spent in the last 2 years. RED can end this debate with a comprehensive report disclosing the marketing expenses vs proceeds from sales, but they continue to avoid this. To me it seems clear why: such a report would reveal to the public that RED is nothing more than a marketing scheme by RED’s partners hoping to brand themselves as socially responsible, when some of them, especially the GAP, are clearly the opposite. To me this is an incredibly dangerous precedent because I think that to combat most of today’s environmental and social problems its going to take a great amount of consumer awareness and responsibility, and RED partner companies intentionally co-opt the responsible consumer sentiment in a misleading, inaccurate way in order to profit (see Jake’s comment and this article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review).
To Tony & Dani & Mark
Some part of each of your comments basically challenge this campaign for not doing anything positive to solve the problem, while at least Bono is trying to do something. Mark has insinuated that this kind of discussion is essentially worthless. I’d argue that a strategic vision for any movement is critical. Does a football team have a huddle and a playbook? Did the civil rights movement’s leaders sit down and have strategic discussions about when and where to employ what tactics and what would be most effective? You bet they did. Is an effective strategy towards solving major problems like AIDS, poverty, climate change, etc., important? You bet it is. What can be accomplished from this discussion? Well I’d hope that the people reading will take away new knowledge about what they can do as a consumer if they want to contribute towards sustainable solutions to the world’s problems, and that they’ll see that RED is not that solution. Hopefully they’ll consider direct donations when they’re thinking about philanthropic giving, and more importantly I hope they’ll put their money into businesses that are socially and environmentally sustainable as much as they can.
It’s true that I’d be rather surprised if we actually raised enough to make Bono retire. That’s one expensive ego to buy out. And that’s ok…because even it doesn’t tip but members continue to join, this is a way for people to aggregate their discontent with RED’s model and make a statement. Maybe if by chance this ever gets back to Bono or other celebrities who are considering how they can use their position of influence to do good in the world, they’ll think about it and make better decisions next time instead of getting sucked into a corporate marketing ploy.
It’s interesting how many RED defenders have made all sorts of assumptions about myself and the members of this campaign – generally that we’re not doing anything to confront the problems, we’re just negative-minded, esoteric, academic naval gazers. Perhaps I am an academic esoteric naval gazer & this is my one and only pathetic contribution to social justice in my entire life. Or perhaps I’ve contributed to social justice in a variety of ways I view as sustainable and effective, through conscious consuming, volunteering, participation in community action groups, etc., and one day I happened to spend a little bit of my time to write a campaign to raise awareness about the problems with RED, which you happened to notice because it got a lot of attention on the internet, probably because a lot of people are glad somebody is bringing these criticisms to light. You have no idea where I land on that spectrum and really it shouldn’t matter….all that matters here is determining if RED is viable or not.
Tony, I do love that web site stuff white people like." They’re generally pretty dead on, and it’s pretty funny. Do you know what would make a great post on there… “Bono.” Here’s another one: “saving the world by buying GAP sweatshop clothes.” But even though I think that site is funny, I think it would be a mistake to react to it by feeling paralyzed about one’s ability to do good in the world and make responsible consumer decisions. If anything that site encourages us to analyze our own self-serving motives for doing “good things.” Indeed I think that’s the self-serving sentiment that RED appeals to in commercials like "this one , and really if the RED campaign isn’t the biggest self-serving scheme meant to further one’s own interests (RED partner companies) while pretending to be altruistic, then I don’t know what is.
To Dani B
I appreciate your input on the point of Bono’s decision to exclude charities that work with sex workers. I do agree with you that he meant probably it as a strategic decision to make RED more successful and that it doesn’t mean that Bono himself doesn’t have empathy towards sex workers with AIDS. While this line of criticism of the RED campaign is the least important one, I do still think it is important, and personally agree with the author of this article who points out that “The whole principle of the Global Fund was supposed to be that everyone would throw their money into a pot, and the resulting stew would get doled out to governments and others who had come up with good, solid plans for preventing HIV and caring for those infected…..But by deciding what is “saleable” and what isn’t in HIV care…..the corporates are undermining the wider fight against the epidemic.” It seems to me that Bono could have taken greater leadership here and stated that the Global Fund knows what its doing with the money, & that they’ll distribute it most effectively because they’re on the ground level. I really don’t see a lot of people even knowing that RED money went to sex-workers, much less deciding not to buy RED iPods because of it, and definitely not enough people to warrant making a move that undermines the founding purpose of the Global Fund.
This is just another example of why the RED campaign is to me quite cynical. It assumes that consumers won’t donate to the Global Fund if any money will treat sex workers, even if that treatment a critical part of the fight against AIDS. It assumes that the only way to get people involved in the cause is by catching them at the GAP. Some would argue that’s just realism. I have higher expectations for consumers and hope that we can build better public awareness about the complexity of these issues so that consumers can contribute to effective solutions. I think there are historical and contemporary examples of effective movements driven by consumer awareness – divestment from apartheid-era South Africa, non-sweat clothing, organic and especially local foods – and believe that consumers have it in them to make a difference when they’re moved to act in effective ways.
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